contemporary

More Need Help

Backstory

When the pandemic and lock-down surged forward, many proud Americans found themselves in a compromising position. Their situation called for behavior and emotions unknown to them.

Click to listen or follow below to read.

More Need Help – #294

Recent years have brought new struggles to families here. People who never before needed help, suddenly cannot be as independent as before. They may reach out to relatives to share living quarters. They may not be able to make ends meet. They may need the help of food stamps or food banks, or even shelters.

When you’re too proud to show you need help, things may only continue to get worse. You can find yourself reeling from the effects on you and your family. It takes a tremendous amount of strength and will to pull through times like this.

Perhaps the most courage of all is being willing to ask for help. When you’re not used to needing help, it’s not easy to speak up.

If you are in this position, I urge you to work up the courage. Reach out and let someone know what you need. It may not be a lot but with some help you may be able to make it through with a lot less pain.

There are people who can help you get through the official system. There are people who will help you privately, quietly, with compassion. From churches, community groups, neighbors, sponsors, you may be surprised to find out how many ways people can and will help.

But it can only happen if they know you need help. It’s okay. When you’re back on your feet you can help others again. For all the caring you’ve done in the past, let someone help you now.

P.S.

Seniors found generous new help. Those sheltering in place at home were concerned about exposure to the virus by grocery shopping or fast food pick up. Dozens of sources sprung up to provide food delivery to the front porch. All they had to know was who needed it.

[Show #294]

SPECIAL EDITION . . . Post Lockdown – The Next Role of Mature Americans

A FOUR MINUTE READ

With a future uncertain and COVID-19 still with us, normalcy is an illusion. Opening strategies will change from region to region. The post-lockdown demand will be high to “get going.”

Chances are that you are a major decision maker in your household. You are considered the rock. Others look up to you and value your decisions. They will look to you for guidance in this new, unprecedented era.

NEW DECISIONS

With this responsibility, we need to figure out how to arrange our lives depending on our individual case. not what the media has to say. As new opportunities to venture out open, we must balance risk with benefits, on a very local basis with our family and our own best interests in mind.

Amidst confusion and contradiction, you will be required to make swift changes. You have to decide who to trust and what to believe. It’s now all trial and error, no matter what anybody says. None of us has ever been here before.

MISTAKES

The thing about decisions is – you are going to make mistakes. Some may just get you off track a bit. Others could cause tragedy. Don’t let early mistakes cripple future decisions. You are expected to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. There’s no time to curl up and grieve.

Your adult children are going to make mistakes too, as they navigate through the bizarre future. Those errors will hurt; they affect precious grandchildren. But everyone is weaving their way through the weeds without a GPS. As a pivotal person in your family, continue to be a safe place to land.

In recent months, we have seen and felt fear, suffering and loss, vividly different in each family. If yours included inconvenience, meals at home every day and a shortage of TP, you’re one of the lucky ones. If you have a financial foothold that will see you through, you are truly blessed. So many do not.

During lockdowns, we’ve learned the value of time to pay attention to those we love. The luxury of that free time may well disappear as we get acclimated to the demands of living with COVID-19 and proceeding with life.

RELATIONSHIPS MAY CHANGE

Some of those valued relationships may drop under the weight of the new decisions to be made. Your mom may think the kids were let out too soon. The business owner spouse may think it’s not soon enough. Civil wars could erupt in families. Be ready to defuse the rhetoric.

Think in advance of what your role may be, in the new normal. Imagine a time checkered with mask-wearing, camera-toting and the scent of sanitizer or Clorox on a hand unwilling to shake yours.

CHILDREN AND TEENS

Children were kept busy and taught during lockdown. Parents figured out how to provide continuity during disruption. Now plan for next semester. Keep an eye out for different education tools newly available or pending.

Remember how teenagers needed comfort and accommodation when this all started and their long-anticipated graduations and proms crumbled to the ground. You assured them there would be a tomorrow with new opportunities.

In the months ahead, they will need a new kind of assurance. The ground Is swirling beneath them. Help them to identify their strengths and where they can fit in as an employee or a student or both, in the new future.

Expect emotion from anger, rejection and despair to utter joy, as unexpected happenings occur, including opportunities and delays. Be ready to sooth insecure thoughts and shore up courage.

ENDANGERED SPECIES – OVER 65

Those over 65 with extra weight, type 2 diabetes, and medical issues continue to be at high risk. How many seniors in your world does that include? Very possibly the majority. You help them survive by staying away.

The silver generation has little choice but to bunker down at home. Galas are a fond memory. Grandparents don’t thrive in a culture where generational hugs are forbidden.

However, seniors who remain safe at home actually have little change from normal life. Their maturity helps. They’ve seen a lot, have handled crises before, and have more resources and resilience than you may imagine.

Sheltering in place has the most consequences for retirement-aged employees. Consider your health robust and return to work? Or take the safe route and finally pull up a front porch rocker?

This new era is birthing a major new wave of software and social media that may leave seniors in the dust. Just when they conquered ZOOM, along comes TikTok and Messenger Room.

NEW THINKING

Staying at home, many people have had the time to consider new concepts of how to live their life. Some have developed ideas on how to improve the world. Others are using the pattern-interrupt caused by the pandemic to establish new behaviors, attitudes and habits to bring into the new future.

NEW WORK CULTURE

For the new work world, skills will be sharpened – or changed – depending on where you land on the career ladder. You will see new manufacturing, astounding new software, and new global competition. Not just USA, China and Russia. Watch for other regions to pop up. Success will come from the different status and approaches taken daringly during the pandemic.

People who never worked from home found that they preferred it. This is your chance to get more of it. Others who lost their position got up the courage to offer their talents in the new marketplace as an entrepreneur. People are dragging out and polishing up former skills and experience as they recognize new openings for employment or innovation, post-lockdown.

Take a hard look at the new work culture. What are the new needs? How quickly will those needs disappear? What is likely to replace those needs? People sewed masks, made videos, delivered meals. What else can we do? Jump out of the box to think unconventionally and from new perspectives.

OLD OR NEW?

The unbelievable happening of a global pandemic shook us into re-thinking the way we do so many things. As we start coming back, do we just put the pieces back together? Or do we create a new and more evolved world that includes the values we’ve recognized anew in recent months.

Lots of decisions to make in the months and years to come about how we recover from this crisis. Be open to change. Don’t be defined by what we lost to this virus but by how we responded to it and what we gained.

BUILDING THE FUTURE

We have been sheltering in place. That role is over. Now is the time to take our place in the new world unfolding before our eyes. We can be powerful role models. We are beautifully strong souls. Let’s pilot direction for our families. We may have to be courageous and take a leap in some areas. Let’s help find a silver lining in this mess.

Make your decisions with a new vision. Not a snapshot that shows only your world in tiny focus. Rather, take a panoramic view of the diversity of age, race, gender, spirit and interests around you.

Take your place with strength and confidence – even if that confidence is a bit shaky right now. Be ready to change on a dime as circumstances reverse, loses occur and needs go back and forth

Your life is a narrative still being written. Who you are, what you do and what you say matters today and impacts tomorrow. Let’s fulfill our part in building and occupying the new future.

Annette E. Petrick
https://considerthisradioshow.com/

Job Hopping

Backstory

Seems that every time friends talk about their grown children, they have a new job. What is all this job hopping about? I decided to look into it.

Click to listen or follow below to read.

Job Hopping – #620

Millennials have a reputation for job hopping. Some say it’s because they don’t get an immediate fancy title or big promotion. The truth is, they usually move on when they have stopped growing or don’t feel appreciated.

Regardless of their responsibilities, everyone wants to feel that they count; that their work makes a difference. They want to feel significant.

The boss feels significant, looking out at the big picture. Most employees, however, do not have this overview. They only know the things they do daily, over and over.

Leaders who keep millennials thriving on the job help them connect the dots and see how their work contributes to the success of the organization. It must be presented in terms that employees can understand and appreciate.

People who don’t feel appreciated are often the first to burn out or jump ship. Successful leaders actively find ways to show others that their value is appreciated.

You see it happen on the TV show, “Under Cover Boss.” Posing as someone else, the boss goes on the line and hands-on discovers those who go above and beyond the call of duty.

Even if you can’t go undercover, you can pay more attention to find out what’s really going on in your business and who deserves credit.

Remember – show appreciation, show how and why each person is significant and reward those who go the extra mile.

P.S.

At home too, words kindness and recognition are appreciated. Be sure grandma knows how much her true home cooking is treasured. Thank the kids for setting the table or discarding their phone before they sit down for dinner. Compliments and happy thoughts are easy to come by – and they are free

[Show #620]

Winter In the Bubble: The Villages

Backstory

After 25 years in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, we are wondering whether to spend retirement somewhere else. We’ve been weighing pros and cons, like these.

Click to listen or follow below to read.

Winter In the Bubble – #656

We lived in a bubble in the winter of 2018. We spent the coldest, snowiest months of the year at The Villages, a huge community for active adults over 55. The winding streets have beautiful landscaping, flowers bloom all year long, there is nightly dancing to live music, dozens of golf courses, a polo field, eleven country clubs and recreation galore.

It is Florida’s magic kingdom for mature adults.

A 50 page newspaper lists hundreds of events each week by different interest groups. You can go to the card game, the lecture, the swimming pool, the pickle ball court or the talent show.

But it is indeed a bubble. What’s missing? The sound of children playing in the streets, neighbors with hair that is not gray or white, anything messy.

The Villages is pristine and perfect. Over 100,000 retirees call it home. Every resident you meet sings its praises.

Critics say it is too sheltered from the outside world and lacks diversity. Residents feel they have earned this perfection in retirement and they make no apologies for their lifestyle. They volunteer, donate, support churches and tend to local underprivileged kids.

We have to decide whether we’d like to live there someday.

P.S.

What things would you take into consideration when deciding where to spend your retirement? Scroll down and share in COMMENTS. Thanks.

[Show #656]

Coupons

Backstory

Coupons keep the old folks coming back. That’s a fact. But many a busy mom counts on coupons to augment her budget. There are casual coupon cutters and dedicated couponers; those who take paper discounts to the counter in-store and those who use their mobile app to cut costs. This story applies to all of them.

Click to listen or follow below to read.

Coupons – #225

Have you heard about the lady who went home with $150 worth of groceries for free in exchange for the coupons she had collected? Although few of us could accomplish that, coupons are certainly a way to save dollars every week on those things you buy.

But I have determined that there are coupon conscious and the coupon challenged. I happen to be in the latter category.

The ragged paper I’ve carried in my wallet for weeks expired the day before I presented it. The free fries I would have gotten the day before with a coupon had been replaced on the menu that very day with rutabaga. I show up for the buy one – get one free – sale, and you guessed it, there’s only one left.

Yet, my genes have produced one of the world’s greatest coupon aficionados. My daughter purchases one of the three-inch-thick coupon books each year with discounts at all manner of local retailers. After six months, three quarters of the pages are missing because she never whips out her wallet that she doesn’t check first to see if there is an applicable coupon.

She cuts them out of newspapers and magazines; keeps them in alphabetical order. Coupons for ice cream, shoes, carpeting, exterminating, video games. You name it, she has a coupon to trump the retail cost.

I try to keep up with her, I really do. Instead, I just admire her stamina while making confetti out of the outdated coupons in my purse.

P.S.

What will stop me in my tracks, when it comes to using coupons on an app? When they ask me for the dang password. That’s it; I’m done.

[Show #225]

Filing

Backstory – Filing

I’ve had careers that always involved administration. I had to keep files and pull files and make files available. It was one of the most difficult tasks for me to conquer. You would think that computerization would have solved my filing challenges. No way! They get lost in the computer as easily as they disappeared in the filing cabinet.

I envisioned that a major benefit of retirement would be – no more files. Then I found out about all the paper work involved with Medicare, IRAs, activities of grandchildren and keeping track of birthdays and other celebrations of relatives and friends.

Hear about my filing adventures and strategies in this week’s story.

Consider This Show – Filing

Click to listen or follow below to read

Has anyone figured out a good way to file papers? I am very good at filing. Putting papers away. What I can’t seem to master is FINDING THEM AGAIN when I want to get them back out.

I remember a rule of filing. You eliminate everything that is redundant. For instance: If you were filing something for the US Department of the Interior. You would not file under U for US because you might have a lot of US stuff. You would not file under D for Department because you might have a lot of departments.

You would file under I for Interior and then add – US Department of. OK, that sounds simple.

Now where do I file the plumber’s invoice? In the house file? The plumber’s file? Alphabetically under his company name? His name?

Maybe I should just do what my guy does. One large box into which goes every paper that passes through his hands. Receipts, letters, solicitations, reunion notices, discount coupons. All in the box.

What do you think? Is it better to spend the time filing them away in an organized manner? Or spend the time finding them amongst a myriad of jumble when you need them?

If I had to keep score, I’d say that each method, for us anyway, takes the same amount of time. The only difference is that he does not get to have cool rules like – Interior, US Department of.

[Show # 334]